Interesting article by Sheikh a former Foreign secretary, he also mentions how as part of ISAF, the rumours of possible Indian troop deployment in Afghanistan.
OVER the years, particularly since the Saur revolution of 1978 brought an apparently communist government to power in Afghanistan, I have urged that Pakistan’s policies towards that country should be based on an honest assessment of the benefits and costs for our national interests. An assessment of this nature must eschew the temptation to forsake long-term national interests to serve short-term gains.
In this context, I was a strong supporter of the assistance we provided to the Afghan Mujahideen since I shared the conventional belief that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was the first step in the USSR’s ideological and physical advance towards the “warm waters of the Arabian Sea” and that securing a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan was a vital national interest.
However, I looked askance at many facets of the policy we designed to serve this goal. We insisted that religion rather than nationalism should be the motivation for the Afghan resistance. We permitted the Afghan refugees — five million of them at one time — to settle wherever they chose in the country. We permitted the setting up, with foreign financing, of schools and madressahs by our religious parties not only in Afghan refugee camps but in our cities.
We turned a blind eye to the excesses committed on our soil by the Mujahideen, which included the sale of arms and narcotics. And we did not discourage the development of ties between the Mujahideen and our religious parties who went on to use the Afghans as their own shock troopers in the domestic polity and became, in many cases, the arbiters when there were differences between the Mujahideen and the government.
These policies were justified on the ground that the costs they imposed were outweighed by the larger national interest that they served. But the truth was that these policies were designed to serve the narrow goal of regime perpetuation and of creating, for this purpose, local constituencies and bases of support. The larger national interest was sabotaged rather than safeguarded by these policies.
Today it is fashionable to suggest that the evils of weapon and narcotics proliferation, the breakdown of law and order and a whole host of other problems were created by the policies that America, Saudi Arabia and other countries thrust upon us as part of the ‘jihad’ against the Soviet Union. The truth is that in determining the policies of the anti-Soviet coalition towards the Afghan jihad, ours was the dominant voice.
The import of foreign Mujahideen may have been arranged by other agencies but it was at our behest and decision that the “danger to Islam” and not Afghan nationalism was to be the basis for the jihad. It was our decision that the 29 Afghan parties engaged in the jihad be reduced to seven because a smaller number could be handled more easily. We wanted no restrictions to be placed on them since this would affect their ability to wage jihad. It was our decision to allow the schools to be set up outside the refugee camps. It was our decision to ignore the violations of laws by Afghan commanders on our soil.
It was our decision to accept the Mujahideen contention that they were entitled to Pakistan’s support not only to secure the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan but also to instal the Mujahideen parties as the government in Kabul. This kept us involved in Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal and made us a party in the civil war that caused more damage to Afghanistan than to the Soviets.
With regard to the Taliban era in Afghanistan there can be no doubt that our policies, including the incomprehensible concept of Afghanistan providing “strategic depth” for Pakistan’s defence, were said to be designed to serve Pakistan’s national interest. However, they were based on inaccurate and stupid, if not dishonest, assessments. It was the flawed policies of that era which reinforced the ominous developments in our tribal areas and the Pukhtun belt of Balochistan during the jihad and created the Taliban threat that we now have to contend with.
Today, if we are serious about moving the country towards enlightened moderation, we need to take a fresh look at the current situation in Afghanistan and to determine what we need to do in order to safeguard our external interests, which coincide with those of the Afghan people even if this is not being fully recognised in either country. We have to do this to prevent further damage to our domestic polity.
The assessment has to be honest and our policies thereafter must be guided by this assessment and not by the interests of those who gain from instability in Afghanistan or those whose vision of Pakistan is at odds with President Musharraf’s “enlightened moderation”. Such an assessment can come only if we acknowledge that the errors of the past have imposed costs that far outweigh the benefits that we derived. It can come only if we shed the belief that our relations with the US are dependent on the latter continuing to need our assistance in Afghanistan. It can come only if we move beyond regarding ourselves as the lead players in the war against terror and acknowledging that in the eyes of much of the world we are at least as much a part of the problem as we are of the solution. On Monday, the UN representative in Afghanistan, Tom Koenigs, said that the international community had underestimated the ability of the Taliban to recover from their 2001 defeat and that it should now respond by stepping up support for Afghanistan. Our foreign office spokesman, reacting strongly to earlier accusations (repeated in the Monday press conference when Mr Koenigs said that “…ending the logistical and ideological support from over the Pakistan border is a Pakistan issue. The international community has to press and support Pakistan in that direction”) by this official, is reported to have said that there were other factors, apart from the Taliban, that had contributed to the worsening situation in Afghanistan, and that the role of the drug mafias, warlords and tribal feuds could not be ruled out.
There are other factors such as the diversion of American attention to Iraq in 2003, the misgovernance by and corruption of Karzai administration officials, the presence of warlords and drug barons in positions of power, the pathetic lack of economic development and job creation particularly in the south and southeast of the country and the indifference to the “collateral damage” caused by the war against terror. (In June the Washington Post reported that in the last three months the US had carried out 340 air sorties in Afghanistan as against 160 in Iraq).
There is the fact that the Americans are reducing their troop levels in Afghanistan, and the Taliban and the people of the southern provinces are convinced that the Nato troops being deployed will not have the same resources or the same will to fight. Many Taliban have said that their present offensive is designed to intimidate Nato troops and create a situation in which their deployment is reversed by the pressure of public opinion in the countries from which the troops have been sent.
The Taliban will have read and propagated among the people the news that the Canadian parliament approved only by the narrowest of margins the proposal to extend Canadian deployment up to 2009. Whatever the factors involved the important thing from Pakistan’s point of view is that the Taliban have gained in strength.
The next important point is that the troops that Nato will deploy are too few to provide the “number of boots on the ground” needed to establish a presence and to support reconstruction while winning the “hearts and minds of the people”. In addition the resources being provided are inadequate for the reconstruction needed. Given the extensive debate that preceded Nato deployment and the questions that are already arising in Nato circles about the wisdom of its involvement it is difficult to visualise either an increase in troop levels or in development assistance disbursements. Will the Afghan army perform better than in the past? Will the quality of governance improve in the short or even medium term? It seems unlikely given the constraints under which President Hamid Karzai is operating and the fact that his government is being held responsible for the present mess.
Will the Taliban win in these circumstances? They cannot no matter how much these negative factors constrain the ability of the coalition forces to eliminate them. What they can ensure is that Afghanistan remains unstable and the areas bordering Pakistan ungovernable. What they can ensure is that opium cultivation and smuggling continue. What they can ensure is that there is no possibility of Afghanistan being a safe transit route for South Asia’s import of Central Asian energy and the growth of Central Asia’s trade with Pakistan and the region.
Will the Americans and their Nato partners call upon the “strategic ally” India to assume responsibilities for physical security in Afghanistan as they themselves draw down? Possibly, but it is unlikely that India will yield to the pressure after its sorry experience in Sri Lanka and its reading of Afghan history.
What we should do in these circumstances to safeguard our interests and to provide succour to the Afghans for whom we have, theoretically, a great deal of sympathy and ties of kinship will be the subject of my next article.
The writer is a former foreign secretary